Tomorrow's Engineer: "Looking for Elephants"

Recently I was having a discussion with a friend of mine, relative to the building industry, and more specifically, how there are good, better, and best engineers in this business. What can be confusing about engineering is that in the design, construction, and operation and maintenance engineering community, being the smartest engineer does not necessarily qualify that person to be the best engineer. Lost in the technical books, computer software, formulas, etc. is the fact that engineering is a business. Thus began our discussion on "looking for elephants."

With each of the three examples above, the goal of the customer is to establish a facility business plan. The goal of the engineer(s) doing the assessment is to provide "big picture" issues and concerns and prioritize each into a decision matrix/action plan. This process can be a good test to differentiate the good/better/best engineers as they are required to approach the project so that they deliver the results to the customer in a manner that will satisfy the facility business plan goal.